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Although state-recognized same-sex unions are becoming more accepted, there is a long history of same-sex unions around the world. Various types of same-sex unions have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned, and temporary relationships to highly ritualized unions that have included marriage.[1]

Europe

Classical Europe

While it is a relatively new practice that same-sex couples are being granted the same form of legal marital recognition as commonly used by mixed-sexed couples, there is a long history of recorded same-sex unions around the world.[2] Various types of same-sex unions have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions. It is believed that same-sex marriage was a socially recognized institution at times in Ancient Greece and Rome,[2] some regions of China, such as Fujian, and at certain times in ancient European history.[3] These gay marriages continued until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) was issued in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome and ordered that those who were so married were to be executed. [4]

Some early Western societies integrated same-sex relationships. The practice of same-sex love in ancient Greece often took the form of pederasty, which was limited in duration and in many cases co-existed with traditional marriage.[5] Documented cases in this region claimed these unions were temporary pederastic relationships.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] These unions created a moral dilemma for the Greeks and were not universally accepted.[13] There may[14] have been, at least among the Romans, marriage between men as evidenced by emperors Nero[15] and Elagabalus[citation needed] who married men, and by its outlaw in 342 AD in the Theodosian Code,[16] but the exact intent of the law and its relation to social practice is unclear, as only a few examples of same-sex marriage in that culture exist.[17]

In Hellenic Greece, the pederastic relationships between Greek men (erastes) and youths (eromenos) were similar to marriage in that the age of the youth was similar to the age at which women married (the mid-teens, though in some city states, as young as age seven), and the relationship could only be undertaken with the consent of the father.[citation needed] This consent, just as in the case of a daughter's marriage, was contingent on the suitor's social standing. The relationship consisted of very specific social and religious responsibilities and also had a sexual component. Unlike marriage, however, a pederastic relation was temporary and ended when the boy turned seventeen.

At the same time, many of these relationships might be more clearly understood as mentoring relationships between adult men and young boys rather than an analog of marriage. This is particularly true in the case of Sparta, where the relationship was intended to further a young boy's military training. While the relationship was generally life long and of profound emotional significance to the participants, it was not considered marriage by contemporary culture and the relationship continued even after participants entered into traditional marriage to women as was expected in the culture when men reached age 30.(citation needed

There were also same sex unions among peers among the Ancient Greeks which were not age-structured. Numerous examples of these are found in Ancient Greek writings. Aristotle praised a same sex couple (Philolaus and Dioclese) who lived their whole lives together and maintained a household together until their deaths when they were buried side by side.[18] Lucian describes a debate in which a proponent of same-sex relationships describes them as being more stable than heterosexual relationships and goes on to express the hope that he will be buried with his lover after they have passed their lives together.[19] Famous Greek couples in same sex relationships include Harmodius and Aristogiton, Pelopidas and Epaminondas and Alexander and Bogoas. However in none of these same sex unions is the Greek word for "marriage" ever mentioned. The Romans appear to have been the first to perform same sex marriages.

The first recorded mention of the performance of gay marriages occurred during the early Roman Empire.[20]

At least two of the Roman Emperors were in gay unions. The first Roman emperor to have married a man was Nero, who is reported to have married two other men on different occasions. Nero "married a man named Sporus in a very public ceremony... with all the solemnities of matrimony, and lived with him as his spouse" A friend gave the "bride" away "as required by law."[21] The marriage was celebrated separately in both Greece and Rome in extravagant public ceremonies. [22] The emperor Elagabalus married an athlete named Hierocles in a lavish public ceremony in Rome amidst the rejoicings of the citizens.[23]

Same-sex marriage was outlawed on December 16, 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law specifically outlaws marriages between men and reads as follows:

When a man marries and is about to offer himself to men in womanly fashion [quum vir nubit in feminam viris porrecturam], what does he wish, when sex has lost all its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment. (Theodosian Code 9.8.3)

Modern Europe

In the 20th and 21st centuries various types of same-sex unions have come to be legalized. Same-sex marriage is currently legal in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. Countries such as Greece, Romania and Poland restrict marriage to opposite-sex union, while countries such as Ireland and Italy are in the process of legislating on the issue.

Policy of the early Christian Church

As did other philosophies and religions of the time,[24] increasingly influential Christianity promoted marriage for procreative purposes. The teachings of the Talmud and Torah, and the Bible, were seen as specifically prohibiting the practices as contrary to nature and the will of the Creator, and a moral shortcoming. Even after the passing of the Theodosian code the Christian emperors continued to collect taxes on male prostitutes until the reign of Anastasius (491-518). In the year 390, the Christian emperors Valentinian II, Theodoisus and Arcadius declared homosexual sex to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be burned alive in front of the public.[25] The Christian emperor Justinian (527-565) made homosexuals a scape goat for problems such as "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences."[26] While homosexuality was tolerated in pre-Christian Rome, it was still nonetheless controversial. For example, arguments against same-sex relationships were included in Plutarch's Moralia.[27]

In pre-Christian Rome and Greek, there had been some debate on the which form of sexuality was preferable. While the majority of people seemed to have believed that bisexuality was the norm, there were those who preferred to be exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. For example, a debate between homosexual and heterosexual love was included in Plutarch's Moralia.[28] It is important to note, however, that there is no evidence of any attempt to circumvent or proscribe homosexuality in Pre-Christian Greek and Roman world before the advent of Christianity and its new ideas about "morality".

After the Middle Ages in Europe, same-sex relationships were increasingly frowned upon and banned in many countries by the Church or the state. Nevertheless, Historian John Boswell argued that Adelphopoiesis, or brother-making, represented an early form of religious same-sex marriage in the Orthodox church. Alan Bray saw the rite of Ordo ad fratres faciendum ("Order for the making of brothers") as serving the same purpose in the medieval Roman Catholic Church. However, the historicity of Boswell's interpretation of the ceremony is contested by the Greek Orthodox Church, and his scholarship critiqued as being of dubious quality by scholars such as Robin Darling Young, Associate Professor of Theology at the Catholic University of America.[29]

In late medieval France, it is possible the practice of entering a legal contract of "enbrotherment" (affrèrement) provided a vehicle for civil unions between unrelated male adults who pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une bourse’ – one bread, one wine, and one purse. This legal category may represent one of the earliest forms of sanctioned same-sex unions.[30]

While the church father, Augustine of Hippo, presented marriage as an important sacrament of the Christian Church in the 5th century CE,[31] it wasnt until the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard, in the middle of the 12th century, that marriage became a part of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Christian Church.[32][33]

North America

In North America, among the Native Americans societies, same-sex unions have taken the form of Two-Spirit-type relationships, in which some male members of the tribe, from an early age, heed a calling to take on female gender with all its responsibilities. They are prized as wives by the other men in the tribe, who enter into formal marriages with these Two-Spirit men[citation needed]. They are also respected as being especially powerful shamans.

In the United States during the 19th century, there was recognition of the relationship of two women making a long-term commitment to each other and cohabitating, referred to at the time as a Boston marriage; however, the general public at the time likely assumed that sexual activities were not part of the relationship.

Rev. Troy Perry performed the first public gay wedding in the United States in 1969, but it was not legally recognized, and in 1970, Metropolitan Community Church filed the first-ever lawsuit seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The lawsuit was not successful. In March 2005, two Unitarian Universalist ministers Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey were charged with multiple counts of solemnizing a marriage without a license in the State of New York. The charges were the first brought against clergy for performing same-sex unions in North America, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay rights group.

The earliest use of the phrase "commitment ceremony" as an alternative term for "gay wedding" appears to be by Bill Woods who, in 1990, tried to organize a mass "commitment ceremony" for Hawaii's first gay pride parade. Similarly, Reverend Jimmy Creech of the First United Methodist Church performed his first "commitment ceremony" of a same-sex couple in 1990 in North Carolina. In January, 1987, Morningside Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends became the first Quaker Meeting to take a same-sex marriage under its care with the marriage of John Bohne and William McCann on May 30, 1987. Although several other Meetings held “Ceremonies of Commitment, Morningside was the first to refer to the relationship as a marriage and afford it equal status.

^ T. Watanabe & J. Iwata, The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality, London: GMP Publishers, 1987

^Hubbard, T. K. (Spring - Summer 1998). "Popular Perceptions of Elite Homosexuality in Classical Athens". Arion6 (1). "Pederasty was an ethical crux for the Greeks, even as homosexuality in general is an ethical and political crux in the present day. Its practitioners were often apologetic, its opponents censorious or derisive.".

^Eskridge, William N. (Oct 1993). "A History of Same-Sex Marriage". Virginia Law Review79 (7). "[The] Romans may have accorded some same sex relationships the legal or cultural status of marriages [...]".

^ Theodosian Code 9.8.3: "When a man marries and is about to offer himself to men in womanly fashion (quum vir nubit in feminam viris porrecturam), what does he wish, when sex has lost all its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.

^Eskridge, William N. (Oct 1993). "A History of Same-Sex Marriage". Virginia Law Review79 (7). "But other, non-Christian traditions in Roman society--Stoicism, Neo-Platonism and Manicheanism--similarly urged that "intercourse was supposed to take place only so as to produce children. The couple must not make love for the sake of pleasure alone."".

^ (Theodosian Code 9.7.6): All persons who have the shameful custom of condemning a man's body, acting the part of a woman's to the sufferance of alien sex (for they appear not to be different from women), shall expiate a crime of this kind in avenging flames in the sight of the people.

^Eskridge, William N. (Oct 1993). "A History of Same-Sex Marriage". Virginia Law Review79 (7). "While the statute [that prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome] reinforces the impression that same-sex marriages were not uncommon in the Roman Empire, it also evidences an anxiety about same-sex unions that antedated the fourthcentury. At the end of the second century, for example, Plutarch's Moralia included a dialogue filled with invective both for and against same-sex relationships, suggesting that their propriety was a matter of some controversy. A subsequent anonymous dialogue entitled Affairs of the Heart was sympathetic to same-sex relationships but sharply distinguished them from marriage.".

^Eskridge, William N. (Oct 1993). "A History of Same-Sex Marriage". Virginia Law Review79 (7). "While the statute [that prohibited same-sex marriage in ancient Rome] reinforces the impression that same-sex marriages were not uncommon in the Roman Empire, it also evidences an anxiety about same-sex unions that antedated the fourth century. At the end of the second century, for example, Plutarch's Moralia included a debate on the merits of Greek pederasty versus heterosexual marriage. The debate points out the good and bad aspects of both forms of love in a debate between proponents of both types of relationships. A subsequent anonymous dialogue entitled Affairs of the Heart was sympathetic to same-sex relationships but sharply distinguished them from marriage.".